For a while now, people have been making some excellent steampunk mods of Nerf guns. Most of the ones I've seen have started with the Maverick pistol, which is a good place to start if you want a fantastical steampunk weapon. Afer this project, I'll be doing my own at some point, but to my knowledge, no one has yet made a steampunk mod of the Longshot, which is odd, because it makes very good base for a steampunk weapon.

As one of my friends had a Longshot he had no particular attachment to, we decided I should fill this hole in the steampunk Nerf arsenal. My original sketches called for a bit more modification than this one actually got, but I wanted to try to have it finished by Halloween, and so scaled back the modifications to a degree. In my opinion, the result was excellent nonetheless.

The first step was to take the gun apart, since that would let me get cleaner paint lines. I photographed the mechanism so I could put it back together when I was done. The reassembled gun still fires, but weakly. I think I must have damaged the plunger at some point.

Step two was to sand off the NERF logo and the other raised text, then take a file to the gun, marking nicks and scratches. I then glued various odds and ends to the gun to add an eccentric look. Junk drawers are great for this, and so is the Axe Man. You might notice that the right half of the gun was damaged, when the stand was removed. This section was replaced with short length of PVC.

Then came the base gold coat of spray paint on the main body of the gun and silver on the other pieces.

The aging process was a lot of fun, and went in three stages. Stage one was a layer of Spanish Copper Rub N Buff in various areas, giving the blank gold a more "aged brass" feel. with some areas very dark and others hardly touched.

Step two was globbing black and brown acrylic paint in all the gouges and holes, then taking a rag to the surface of the gun, cleaning off the excess and leaving a "dirty" grime in all the sunken areas. This was done to the clip and the other silver parts as well. It produces a very aged feeling to the whole thing, but I wanted it to have a bit more depth, so I mixed some green with the black and proceeded to stage three.

This was similar to stage two but I was more selective in the areas where the green went, and careful not to leave too much on the surface. This really gives the impression that the gun has been used and has gotten wet over and over again.

The stock was made from a piece of scrap wood from Menards, cut to shape with a scroll saw and rounded and polished with a dremel and variety of sand papers, then stained. It was glued in place with Gorilla glue, which seems to be more than adequate to hold the stock to the gun. I sanded the bonding area down to the blue plastic and made sure it was good and rough before the gluing, which seems to have done the trick. The leather around the stock is cosmetic rather than functional here.

This probably won't be the last steampunk Nerf gun to show up here. This project was fantastically fun, and I love the result. Now I want one that actually fires a decent range! I'd take it back apart to fix it, but I can't get it apart with the stock glued on. I think I need to modify the barrel more on the next one as well. The stock barrel looks decent painted up, but lacks a proper steampunk flavor. It works, but could be a lot better.

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on November 5, 2011
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